THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TANGIBLE USER INTERFACES

fsr

Post navigation

Description

We must have heard people defining various intensities of handshakes. Some say that a handshake was “mellow” and some say it was “warm”. Well, these terms sound pretty vague as they are subjective. It’s time to bring in a device that actually measures how strong was your handshake. I used a Force Sensitive Resistor on a glove to measure how hard the handshake was. The way people would be able to measure this “hardness” is by seeing the color change of the LED on the glove and the sound of the speaker. The harder the handshake, the higher the frequency. It was a difficult task to find out the exact spot on the hand that would measure the intensity appropriately. Light handshakes might not involve the touch of palms, so the FSR had to be placed somewhere, where there is a definite contact. I figured it out to be the tip of the index finger.

Description

We all (most of us) have played the popular game of Pocket Tanks. For those who dont know about it, it’s a two player turn based game where one player controls the velocity and the angle at which his/her tank will shoot so as to land a hit on the opponent’s tank. I thought of an interesting way in which pocket tanks can be played. I used a potentiometer to control the angle of the nozzle and the force sensor to decide the velocity with which one is supposed to hit the other tank. The harder you press on the force sensor , the further the shot goes. I mapped the values of the potentiometer from 0 to 180 and the values of the FSR from 0 to 100.